Ocean Education

Sample Activities | Oceans Day | Blue School Program | Blue School Criteria | Register in the Program | Blue School Profiles | Blue School Network | Marine Photos and Drawings |
Ocean Education 2006 | Ocean Education 2005 |
Ocean Education 2004 | Ocean Education 2003 |
Other Packages From CWF

Overview

If there's just one lesson to learn from our extraordinary Ocean Education program it's that all of us are ocean creatures. Marine ecosystems are critical to the well-being of every life form on this blue planet. No matter where we live, from the dampest shorelands and marshlands to the driest grasslands and timberlands, our everyday actions impact on the oceans that give us life. To make that impact a positive one, the Canadian Wildlife Federation — in league with the Canadian Association of Principals, Canadian Museum of Nature, Environment Canada (Biodiversity Convention Office and Marine Environment Division), Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Intoinfo Inc., North American Wetlands Conservation Council (Canada), Parks Canada Agency, and Scouts Canada — produces an Ocean Education kit every year.

• Each classroom-ready, thematic unit pays tribute to Oceans Day (June 8).
• It constitutes a long-term lesson plan designed to inform youth about a particular oceans issue, such as sustainability, marine ecosystems, or migratory habitat.
• Each package is brimming with action and awareness activities to enable young Canadians to become better stewards of our watery wonders.
• Students can also help save our seas by registering their institution as a Blue School and developing and carrying out a "Blueprint for Ocean Action."

Oceans Day

Like a tide of awareness about the state our seas, Oceans Day rolls in each June eighth.

• Proclaimed in 1992 at the UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, this annual event is the inspiration for the Ocean Education program.
• It is also the occasion for a splashy public-awareness campaign to inform Canadians from coast to coast about their connection with the ocean and how they can encourage its healthy future.
• Special issues of Canadian Wildlife and Biosphère magazines feature in the campaign.
• Countless Oceans Day activities occur nationwide, including marine-related talks and exhibits, boat cruises, film festivals, art displays, shoreline cleanups, and scuba-diving demonstrations.
• To help spread the word that oceans are vital to migratory species, the slogan "Keep Ocean Life on the Move" and a poster depicting a sea duck highlight this year's campaign.
• Contact WILD Education for more information on Oceans Day and to find out how you can get involved.

Blue School Program

Not only are schools going green, they're also becoming blue. Launched in 1998 — the International Year of the Ocean (IYO) — the Blue School program is a five-year endeavour that encourages youth to raise awareness about ocean conservation and to make the Earth a bluer planet.

• You can help by registering in the program and by developing and carrying out a "Blueprint for Ocean Action."
• Becoming blue, or ocean friendly, is a reachable goal for every school in Canada. It means achieving important goals, such as helping to prevent marine pollution, conserving aquatic habitat, and celebrating Oceans Day, June 8.
• Any class, school, or youth group may enrol in the program — and for any length of time.
• Sign up today to show your support for the planet's oceans. Or take full advantage of the program by drawing up a blueprint spanning two, three, four, or more years, so your group may carry out various stages of a plan over time.
• Funding is available to groups that demonstrate how their efforts will help our oceans. Participants will also receive a beautifully crafted medallion for each year they keep us informed of their progress.
• About 60 schools registered in the program in 1998, each gleaning a commemorative IYO medallion and mounting plaque.
• To qualify as blue, your school must meet key criteria and register its "Blueprint for Ocean Action" with WILD Education.
• The Blue School program is closely related to Habitat 2000, Golden Gardens, and other Canadian Wildlife Federation initiatives.

Blue School Criteria

Your "Blueprint for Ocean Action" must meet one or more of the criteria listed below. Feel free to come up with your own ideas or draw from suggestions offered in past or present Ocean Education kits.

1. Raise awareness about ocean conservation issues in your school and/or community on Oceans Day, June 8th.
2. Collaborate with your community, seeking expert and volunteer help, to ensure the success of your ocean projects.
3. Discover all the ways in which you and your school are interconnected with the ocean — how you need it to survive and how your actions help or harm marine ecosystems, no matter where you live.
4. Link up with another school or community — coastal or inland — in a distant part of Canada or the world and collaborate on an ocean awareness activity or action project.
5. Tackle an international project dedicated to ocean health, working in partnership with a school, community, or organization outside Canada.
6. Undertake a wildlife habitat project to benefit migratory species that need the ocean to survive.
7. Take conservation action on behalf of the Arctic Ocean.
8. Conserve Canada's aquatic heritage, protecting freshwater and marine ecosystems, not only for their ecological importance but also for their historical and cultural value.
9. Boost biodiversity by enhancing or protecting aquatic habitats that hold a rich variety of life or by discouraging human actions that could result in species loss.
10. Prevent ocean pollution by cutting marine debris off at its source and turning off the tap on land-based contaminants.

Register in the Program and Apply for Funding

Need a financial boost to get started on projects to improve ocean health? Support is available from the Blue School Fund. To qualify for assistance, your project must meet certain criteria. (Merely cleaning or beautifying an area isn't enough; you should be able to explain how wildlife will benefit.) Use the Blue School Registration Form to register your project and apply for funding. Projects may be registered electronically. However, to be eligible for funding, you must print out and fax or mail the form, signed and dated, to us. Keep the following in mind when applying for funding:

• CWF will only consider applications for funding that demonstrate student initiative in all phases of a project to ensure that educational objectives are met.
• Any grade — from kindergarten through high school — is eligible. Youth groups supervised by qualified leaders are also eligible.
• Funds are available for the purchase of non-capital equipment and supplies needed specifically for Ocean Education projects; for example, plants, trees, seeds, and lumber. Transportation costs are not covered.
• Plantings must consist of native vegetation.
• Funding is limited to a maximum of $200 per class and $500 per school.
• Funding is not retroactive; all projects must be registered with the Canadian Wildlife Federation before they can be considered for financial support.
• Please apply only for the amount of money you need. Try calling on volunteers, getting your community involved, or having students bring what they can, such as hand tools or rakes and shovels, from home.
• The Blue School Fund selection committee meets in spring and fall and evaluates all applications according to a point system. Special consideration is given to the age level and number of students involved in a project, its complexity, and the extent of community and/or volunteer support.
• Groups supported by the Blue School Fund must provide follow-up photos, slides, or written descriptions of completed projects. Long-term projects are eligible for funding each year, as long as follow-up is provided for each phase completed.
• Schools already involved in Habitat 2000 projects are eligible for further support under this program if they wish to extend their efforts to include marine habitat projects.

Blue School Profiles

Dr. Arthur Hines High School, Summerville, Nova Scotia: About 180 enthusiastic students, staff, community members, and parent volunteers are involved in the third of a five-year shoreline enhancement initiative. Each year, students visit a different beach along the Avon River and tackle projects, from organizing shoreline cleanups to installing nesting boxes. They investigate rock formations, signs of erosion, and evidence of human use. By recording such observations at different locations over time, the students are identifying threats, natural features, and ecological processes at work in shoreline habitats. These sustained and meaningful conservation efforts are benefitting both natural and human communities, not to mention the students, who are learning important lessons about their link with the ocean.

École Secondaire de la Salle, Trois Rivières, Quebec: In an effort to monitor and conserve water quality, these secondary students have been studying the health of fish in two different bodies of water. For the past three years, they have met once a week to improve their skills in fish identification and anatomy. In spring, they gather data from the St. Lawrence and Nicolet rivers to determine how various species of fish react to different environments. The healthier the fish, the healthier the waterway that flows to the sea. The students share their findings with the Montreal Biosphère. They also plant native trees along the shorelines to prevent erosion and, in turn, siltation of the river beds. Terrestrial species also benefit from the food and shelter provided by the trees.

Mountain Gate Community School, Canmore, Alberta: More than 1,300 metres high in the Canadian Rockies and a thousand kilometres from the nearest coast, students are helping to make the Earth a bluer planet. Their goals -- to discover the ways in which they are interconnected with oceans and to promote healthy streams and wetlands. In last year's project, known as the "Wetland Awareness and Policeman Creek Cleanup," students, teachers, and parents collected 20 bags of garbage. Local plants, fish, amphibians, and insects will benefit from improved water quality, as will wildlife in connecting waterways and the ocean itself. Additional classroom aquatic projects and wetland ecological studies have given the students a deeper sense of the links between themselves and the sea.

Westvale Public School, Waterloo, Ontario: Enrolled in the Blue School program since 1998, these youngsters have raised not only funds but also awareness about ocean issues through poster campaigns and community partnerships. Their Enviro Club and EnviroInfo newsletter educate schoolmates and the wider community about the global importance of conserving aquatic habitats. By tracing the path that local waterways take to the sea, the students have learned that community actions and land-based contaminants have far-reaching impacts on oceans worldwide. They have also realized that keeping waterways healthy means keeping the land healthy, too, and have undertaken terrestrial habitat projects, such as cleaning up garbage and planting native trees.

Blue School Network

Imagine students in Regina collaborating with students in Iqaluit to curb climate change — without travelling the 2,500-kilometre distance between their schools. Or scouts in Toronto linking up with scouts in Gaspé to help prevent contaminants flowing through the Atlantic Drainage Basin. Or a school in British Columbia working with schools in California and Mexico to monitor migrating pods of grey whales. Our growing awareness that lakes, rivers, oceans, pollutants, and migratory species know no borders obliges us to think globally. By forming national and international partnerships with other schools, youth groups, and communities we can better meet our ocean conservation objectives.

• Team up with your peers in other regions and countries of the Western Hemisphere to share information, exchange ideas, discuss ocean issues, and collaborate on marine conservation projects.
• Establish partnerships through the Blue School Network, a virtual meeting place for teachers, students, youth groups, and youngsters in distant parts of the world.
• To cooperate on an ocean project with a partner elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere, fill in a Blue School Network Registration Form. Or contact WILD Education by telephone or snail-mail and fill out a registration form with your grade level, interests, project ideas, and contact information.
• Specify the grade with which you want to do a project and the language you prefer to use (English, French, or Spanish).
• An announcement with your school's name and interests will then be posted on the Blue School Network Message Board.
• Once you've linked up with another school, notify WILD Education, so we can remove you from the active list.

Other Ocean Education Packages Available From CWF

Give Ocean Life a Safe Harbour from Climate Change (2002). The module is designed to inform Canadian youth about the value of marine ecosystems, the impacts of climate change on aquatic wildlife and habitats, and the need to conserve them. It is:

• packed with classroom-ready materials, including a resource sheet, information poster, learning activities, and cards, that communicate fundamental concepts through a student-centred, hands-on approach;
• supplemented by online activities relating to climate change;
• linked thematically with the Common Framework of Science Learning Outcomes (Pan-Canadian Protocol for Collaboration on School Curriculum) and suitable for use with K to 12 students;
• complemented by our Blue School program, a five-year endeavour that encourages youth to raise awareness about ocean health and to make the Earth a bluer planet;
• closely connected with other WILD Education programs, such as Fish Ways, Project WILD, Below Zero, and WILD School, plus this year's National Wildlife Week educational kit, which deals with the impacts of climate change on terrestrial and freshwater habitats; and
• compatible with a wide variety of school subjects, including art, biology, oceanography, health, earth science, environmental science, geography, language arts, math, physics, and social studies.

Contact CWF to order the package.

Canada is an Ocean Community (2001). The module features more than a dozen classroom-ready lesson plans that will help you achieve curriculum outcomes described in the Common Framework of Science Learning Outcomes (Pan-Canadian Protocol for Collaboration on School Curriculum). The student-centred, hands-on activities and resource sheets in the module help learners from grades K to 12 take responsible action for aquatic creatures and habitats.

Complementing the learning module is a printed package containing a Teacher's Bulletin, Oceans Day 2001 poster, and Save Your Ocean Community board game. Contact CWF to order the package.

Oceans . . . Closer Than You Think (2000): This unit reminds us that our planet's aquatic bodies, both fresh and salt water, are linked together in one vast, flowing web. The package offers young Canadians, from coast to coast, a whole new sea of opportunities to make the Earth a bluer planet. Link to this online learning module.

Keep Ocean Life on the Move (1999): Packed with resources for action and awareness activities, this unit focuses on the challenges facing migratory species.

One Earth, One Ocean, One Life (1998): Commemorating the International Year of the Ocean, this package focuses on Canada's incredible coasts and the need to restore and protect them for the good of all creatures, from lobsters to leatherback turtles.

Make Waves! Celebrate Oceans Day, June 8 (1997): This unit focuses on the need to sustain ocean resources for a healthy future.

Your Actions Make Waves From Sea to Sea (1996): This kit is replete with resources to teach young people that, no matter where they live, their everyday actions can help or harm oceans.

Ocean Life Depends on Us (1995): This guide shows students how to become better caretakers of our seas by conserving marine ecosystems.

Contact us to order copies of past and present Ocean Education kits by mail or to request the next ocean education kit by mail.